Software Lead Weekly

This Week's Favorite

We all reach a certain point in our job, where things are less fun and exciting. Michael Lopp shares not only how to spot those moments where your teammates are bored, but also how to lift them back up and bring that feeling of joy to their daily tasks. The only thing that I would add to Michael's post is to educate yourself about the things they are passionate about. Figure out what exactly is triggering their passion and see if you could provide them challenges that would benefit the business and themselves. Great read!

Culture

Stef Lewandowski (of MakeShift) explains why long work hours don't help you in the long term. Working for crazy hours in my first startup, I can really relate to Stef's insights, although the problem, I believe, is never in the hours you've put, but in the balance. It's more about priorities and investing time in things you love. The best way I found to manage my balance is to set up time in my calendar for reading (late night), writing (early morning) and always be home to eat dinner with my wife. Our quality time together is more important than anything else. I can always continue to work to the late hours of the night. Stef nails it perfectly - "Be driven, but be realistic, and create a culture based on flow, process and collaboration, not work heroism."

This post is a mix of technical insights with company's culture. What I took from it, is the power in building tools which reduce tedious work, speed up answers and above all - enable faster learning of your business. Speeding up their infrastructure by using Mesos, is vital to Airbnb's learning cycles. People love to experiment (query data) when a hypothesis can be validated (or invalidated) quickly.

If you haven't read Nathan Barry's Productivity Manifesto, now is the time. Short, concise and pragmatic productivity tips you can download (PDF) and share at the office. My favorite: using "hosts" file to block distractions (Twitter, Facebook etc.) on my work laptop.

Peopleware

This post is a close second to this week's favorite post. "The shorter path to maximized quality is in maximized quantity, and executing on the feedback after each finished product." - Even if you're not trying to become a world expert in a certain field, there is a huge value in learning "how to learn". Do more of the same, apply different approaches, understand the process and automate it (or even delegate it).

Fascinating insights from Cap Watkins. I wish I could have read Cap's post when I was a Team Lead for the first time. Above all, acting as a source of clarity, explaining business motivation and providing context is probably the best value you can provide to your teammates. Hire people who can get the job done, state exactly your expectations of them, explain the why (not how) and focus on the person (not task).

Very short and useful tip to reduce meetings "noise". I need to apply this lesson more often, both when I meet people, asking for their advice and for being asked to provide some feedback. It would reduce the number of meetings and increase the value in each one.